"METAL" RESOUNDS

          The 1981 film inspired by the adult sci-fi, horror, and fantasy magazine Heavy Metal, featuring a string of animated stories shown to a girl in a barn by a glowing green orb calling itself the Loknar.
          Bolstered by great songs from Cheap Trick, Sammy Hagar, Journey, and others, the cult classic reflects the magazine's futuristic-soft porn ethos. It's not an American invention, actually. Heavy Metal, first published in 1977, was the US version of a French magazine first published in 1973 called Metal Hurlant.
          Like the French animated masterpiece Fantastic Planet (1973), the strong suit of Heavy Metal is sheer imagination, with the additional benefit of humor thoroughly marbled, plus varying degrees of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll.
          One story, "Den", has a geeky kid named Dan earnestly attesting that when a weird glowing green meteor landed on his lawn, he was transported to another world where he became a muscular bald dude named Den. As voiced by John Candy, the affirmation, "I wasn't about to go around with my dork hanging out," greatly entertains and typifies much of the film's irreverent stoner tone.
          The hand-drawn animation appears flat compared to many computer-generated images, yet it's a cinematic breath of fresh air to see the variety and unique style that current Disney re-makes so woefully lack. Indeed, CG effects defeat the purpose of animation. That purpose is not to replicate reality, but rather to improve upon it with a vision which we call artistic. Bugs Bunny, for example, doesn't look like a real rabbit. Intentionally so. And that intention would be lost in a CG product of a regular old rabbit hopping around.
          Furthermore, Disney's decision to shove decades of differently animated movies into one ill-advised uniform CG shellac negates art. Because Disney bought ABC, Marvel, and Star Wars, everything they do is automatically and undeservedly too big to fail, but none of it's any good.
          Better off watching Heavy Metal, even though it has ten different directors and ten different writers. For additional animated kicks, check out the sword and sorcery action of Fire and Ice (1983), featuring the art of the great Frank Frazetta.


HEAVY METAL
Starring (the voices of)
John Candy,
Harold Ramis,
Eugene Levy,
John Vernon,
Douglas Kenney
Runtime 86 minutes


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE